An opening title for Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest
Hotel" defines its locale, the fictional middle-European nation of Zubrowka, as "once the seat of an
empire." While this is the first of Anderson's films to
take place in a truly historical context, you could make the same statement
about other insulated worlds within Anderson's universe.

What was Rushmore Academy in "Rushmore," after all, if not Max Fischer's
imperial domain? What was the research vessel Belafonte in "The
Life Aquatic" but the empire
of oceanographer Steve Zissou? Or the family home to each member of "The
Royal Tenenbaums"? Anderson's movies look back on times and places where
infinite experience could be had within finite space, and the illusion of
control held sway. Often, his protagonists are children -- Max Fischer, or the
pre-teen lovers on the run in "Moonrise
Kingdom." But while his latest is told from the perspective of a teenager,
its real protagonist, the ruler of its discrete realm, is a middle-aged
concierge named Gustave H.

"The Grand Budapest Hotel" takes place for the most part in
1932, although by the time we get there we're three flashbacks deep. The movie
opens as a young woman, presumably in the present day, gazes at the statue of a
famous author, whose book she carries. We then cut to the author (Tom
Wilkinson) himself, in 1985, and soon enough to his younger self (Jude Law) in 1968, visiting a Grand Budapest well
past its glory days as one of Europe's prime destinations and encountering its aging
owner, Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham).

Zero then takes over narrating duties, as his 17-year-old
self (Tony Revolori) gets hired on as a lobby boy under the direction of the
larger-than-life Gustave (Ralph Fiennes). A perfectionist in matters of taste
and detail, Gustave also enhances the Grand Budapest's Hotel allure for the
numerous rich old women he enthusiastically romances. When one such paramour,
played by a superbly made-up Tilda Swinton, suddenly dies, her greedy relatives
(led by a deliciously overexcited Adrien Brody) are enraged by Gustave's
inheritance of a priceless painting, "Boy with Apple," and attempt to frame him
for her murder.

Farcical shenanigans ensue, including one of the more
complicated prison breaks in film history, an epic alpine chase scene, some
gunplay, some fisticuffs, a little finger-severing, a beheading and the
consumption of a large number of pastries from Mendl's, the local bakery where the
object of Zero's affection, Agatha (Saoirse Ronan), works. As usual, the
director employs just about anyone who's ever been in one of his
films: Jason Schwartzmann, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe, Owen
Wilson, Jeff Goldblum, and Harvey Keitel all make return appearances in the
Andersonverse. (If you've ever appeared in a Wes Anderson movie, and he hasn't
called you back for another, you should give him a call to find out what you
did wrong.)

The familiarity and conviviality of the cast, and the
trademark side-to-side camera movements, make "Grand Budapest" feel like a stage
production from a repertory company -- maybe "The Guns of August" as interpreted
by the Max Fischer Players. It's specifically an ode to a world of European
sophistication and civility which was, if it ever existed at all, destroyed by
the barbarity of World War II. The catastrophe of fascism lurks around the
edges of the movie, and pokes its head into frame more and more as things move
along. The film was inspired by the writings of the Austrian-born Stephan
Zweig, who chronicled these prelapsarian moments before fleeing Nazism in the
1930s and committing suicide in 1942.

Anderson's nostalgia has always been more rueful than
golden-hued, appreciative of bygone worlds because
of their flaws and tragedies rather than despite them. That mixture of
melancholy remembrance, boy's-own adventure and gentle satire hasn't ever been
as politically complex as it is here. In depicting Gustave as the last man
standing for a 19th-century European idea of civilization, the movie
also acknowledges the flaws in that idea. Despite his friendship towards Zero, Gustave's
casual racism and chauvinism erupt at times, revealing a paternalistic,
colonial mindset.

Gustave's constricted worldview is evident, too, in Anderson's
choice to shoot in the squarish, 1.33:1 aspect ratio, rather than the expansive
widescreen format he's often used in the past. It's the same screen size employed
in the sophisticated Ernst Lubitsch comedies of the 1930s which Anderson
readily admits were an influence, and it's appropriate for a film in which most
characters feel squeezed by circumstance. This stylistic choice, as well as the
deeply nested story, indicates perhaps that Anderson's identification with his
protagonists isn't as primal or unreserved as it is in his other stories of
precocious obsessives questing after order.

Sexuality, violence and even language are approached with
something closer to adult cynicism, too. Occasional references to the punctilious
Gustave's presumed bisexuality, various bloody if cartoonish bits of violence,
and crude epithets sputtered in frustration by Gustave and others all contribute
to something that, in the context of Anderson's past work (other than, perhaps,
"Tenenbaums"), has to be called edginess. He's probably never going to make a
movie that's a clean break from his signature styles and concerns (and that's
probably a good thing), but "The Grand Budapest Hotel" shows Anderson engaging
with the world outside his meticulously composed frames like never before.

The lowdown:
Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes), an especially adept concierge, makes the Grand
Budapest Hotel run smoothly in 1932, but the greedy relatives of his late
dowager mistress and the rise of continental fascism may put a crimp in his
plans. Wes Anderson's latest fanciful exploration of a meticulous, constricted environment
engages with real-world history more than ever before.